Video tutorial: Using Illustrator's Appearance panel

  • Software Illustrator CS3 or later
  • Time needed 10 minutes
  • Skills-Add complex effects while retaining the ability to edit-Create new graphic styles

Illustrator has a lot of tools on offer to help your workflow, but arguably there are none more important than the Appearance panel. It’s the most useful addition to the application in recent years, and once you get into the habit of using it, you’ll wonder how you worked before.

In this quick tutorial I’ll run over the basics of how to add multiple strokes and fills to an object, and work with each one individually, while considering how they affect each other as a group.

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